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'Minions' movie sees massive box office debut as 'gentleminions' TikTok trend takes off

Yahoo Finance Live anchors discuss the box office debut for 'Minions: The Rise of Gru' and a TikTok trend that prompted Gen Z to attend the movie wearing suits.

Video Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING]

- Now you.

(SINGING) This may be the only opportunity that I got.

- Kevin, Kevin, Kevin.

DAVE BRIGGS: Rather remarkable. "Minions The Rise of Gru," shattering expectations, and in fact defying logic to some with a 4th of July weekend record, $125 million opening, if you can believe it or not. The largest animated opening since pre-pandemic. For the millions of you that saw the movie over the weekend, you may have noticed a peculiar sight, packs of young men in suits packing theaters. The trend #gentleminions started on TikTok, as you might imagine. It has accumulated millions of views.

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Universal Pictures took notice, tweeting to the gentle minions, we see you. We love you. Rachelle, I love this trend. I don't entirely understand it, though.

RACHELLE AKUFFO: These days, you never know what's going to go viral. I mean, one of the first people who did it, a young guy named Bill Hearst in Sydney, Australia, he created one of the first posts like this. He said, look, we were going to see the movie. We just had a formal event a few days before. Let's throw on our suits. Then he said when he went, he saw another group. And it was like the Spider-Man meme where everyone is like, well, why are you dressed up? So this thing has just really, really ballooned.

I'm like, look. If you want to dress nicely for the movies, I'm not mad at it. We did see some movie theaters in England saying that some of these groups were getting a little bit rowdy, sort of disrupting the movies for people. But for the most part, they do seem to be behaving like gentlemen, gentle minions, as it were.

DAVE BRIGGS: I wouldn't expect to see men of that age at all in that movie. But I found out this is not just for kids. My 16-year-old absolutely loved this film. So apparently, there is something to the $125 mil.

RACHELLE AKUFFO: That's that million magic. What can I say?